When Cathy England smiles–and life does amuse her–you see a black hole, a gap where her right incisor and the tooth next to it are missing. In fact, her mouth harbors two crescents of cracked, rotten teeth, enamel relics of a tough life and a trio of bitter men who…

Steve Krafft, a reporter with Channel 10, asked last Friday if I’d print the Unabomber’s lengthy manuscript. This is the sort of question that’s supposed to stump journalists. There will be convention panels on this weighty matter all year long. Earlier in the week, the Unabomber had threatened to blow…

MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN NEEDS GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT Convict groupie Donna Hamm was arrested for obstruction June 12 outside Tucson during a staged media event. Hamm had bellowed into a bullhorn for an hour in a clumsy attempt to incite a chain gang of 20 men from the Arizona State Prison complex. Not…

Cheryl Burgess, a member of the Wickenburg Town Council, said she had documents and information about the explosion in Oklahoma City. A self-described Arizona patriot, Burgess is a faithful trooper in the militia culture that President Bill Clinton has blamed for the bombing of the federal building. Today, Cheryl Burgess…

The two men walked into the Subway sandwich shop with their weapons hidden. Both carried large, serious knives and they demanded all the money in the drawer. One guy went into the back of the store and grabbed the woman who managed the place. Out front, the second thief held…

It’s 3 a.m. What were only minor problems in the daylight are nightmares in the dark. Who can sleep with thoughts closing in like tarantulas stepping across my pillow? What if as a child I’d been adopted by Mia Farrow? Or, even worse, what if Carl Kunasek is elected to…

After a certain age, you don’t get weepy over country-music laments or wonder at the integrity of politicians. But even if you’ve got the digestive system of a boa constrictor, it is difficult to swallow the level of distortion, the high-finance perversion of facts and the bald-faced lying that is…

The chairs in the dirt yard are draped with children openly eyeing me. They are too young and innocent to bother masking their curiosity. When their mother talks, they are quiet. “I don’t raise my kids that the police are some kind of Officer Friendly. I tell these children the…

He is dead and he is cremated, but the tragedy of Michael Despain’s short, troubled life is not over. In death, Michael has achieved an awful notoriety as Phoenix’s first hate killing, a crime category law enforcement began tracking in 1990. Michael’s memory, however, is now the hostage of a…

When the flames from the arson fire were put out last month, investigators discovered human remains in the upstairs bedroom. While dental records were the only way to identify the charred body of 24-year-old Michael Despain, there was one piece of physical evidence the fire did not destroy: The male…

Jeffery Lynn Blain, at 37, has heard more than one man’s share of bad news, yet he does not give in to self-pity or succumb to depression. He fights on, tenacious, unyielding, a dead man who refuses to attend his own wake. In 1991, Jeffery was informed that his brother…

Nothing like it has ever occurred in Arizona. Last Thursday, Judge Stanley Goodfarb stood in a courtroom, stripped of the familiar comfort he usually takes from his black robes. Ushered before the Arizona Supreme Court in the civilian clothes of the accused, Goodfarb stood charged with making racist comments and…

Thanks to a breach in Governor Fife Symington’s security, I now know the nature of his executive secretary’s testimony before the grand jury last week. Joyce Reibel’s statements occurred behind closed doors and are, of course, privileged. But her testimony before the grand jury was preceded by a government interrogation…

I look at police files for a living. So I’ve got a problem with a proposed State House bill that would lock up those reports. And because the police have retaliated against me when I’ve exposed law enforcement corruption, I’m not wild about the idea that, somehow, the behavior of…

I look at police files for a living. So I’ve got a problem with a proposed State House bill that would lock up those reports. And because the police have retaliated against me when I’ve exposed law enforcement corruption, I’m not wild about the idea that, somehow, the behavior of…

I look at police files for a living. So I’ve got a problem with a proposed State House bill that would lock up those reports. And because the police have retaliated against me when I’ve exposed law enforcement corruption, I’m not wild about the idea that, somehow, the behavior of…

Hillya Mooney’s voice on the telephone, so chipper, so sweetly cadenced, gave no hint of the story she would finally tell. “You wrote about me in your column,” said Hillya, pausing to allow words of acknowledgment to float back to her on the line. But I could not place her…

Even in Arizona, you do not normally get your aspirants for high public office on a grand-theft-auto rap. But last week, U.S. Senate front-runner Dick Mahoney was explaining to me how he had not stolen another man’s truck. Startled into accounting for his behavior, Mahoney put his explanation together slowly,…

Bishop Thomas J. O’Brien ought to be on his knees, praying for forgiveness. On Friday, August 27, Father Wilputte Alanson “Lan” Sherwood was sentenced to ten years in prison. In diaries and home movies seized by the police, the priest had chronicled his own sexual liaisons with 22 underage boys…

You could tell right off that Grant Woods was upset. “This was so bad and so outrageous,” said the attorney general in a phone call to New Times managing editor Jeremy Voas. “It’s absolutely fucking ridiculous.” Mr. Voas did not disagree. We had asked Woods to be photographed, telling him…

There is a new, Phoenix-produced television show that is witty, informative and, most surprising of all, telecast on KAET. The Valley’s PBS outlet, Channel 8, has long been recognized for its local lineup of dull talking heads. Is there a sauna bench in any YMCA more stultifying than KAET’s Horizon…

Amid the spectacle of Arizona’s notorious law enforcement sting, AzScam, the most chilling facet of the undercover operation remains unobserved by the public and unremarked upon by the press. The cops and the prosecutors tried to railroad a clean guy. The Phoenix chief of police, the Maricopa County attorney and…